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Category Archives: Grand Prix

For those of you attending GP San Diego this weekend, here’s my short list of places you might want to go for food (or just to hang out) when you’re not Moderning your way to victory.

Near-ish to the venue:

The Field – A genuine Irish pub, with genuine Irish food (and you can watch quidditch matches – aka hurling – on television there early some morning). The Field serves Irish breakfast from 9am to 1pm on weekends, which is too late if you’re in the main event, but can otherwise carry you through the day. Guinness and coffee at breakfast will do that for you.

Point Loma Seafoods – The best fresh seafood. Like, anywhere. My favorite is the crab sandwich, which will spoil you for all future crab sandwiches.

‘bertos of all kinds – If you haven’t had cheap Mexican food in San Diego, find the nearest little place whose name is some modification of ‘berto: Albertos, Albertitos, Robertos, Roybertos (a personal favorite) and so forth. Alternately, you can eat where I did in high school and hit up Cotija Taco Shop in Point Loma (which earns 4 stars on Yelp!).

The Grand Prix schedule for 2011 has been released. Click here to check it out.
2010 saw a Pro Tour in my home town, and this year there’s going to be a Grand Prix in San Diego as well. The format is Extended, which is pretty nice – although the timing ends up being potentially awkward, since it’s just shy of Thanksgiving weekend (although that may or may not end up being in San Diego anyway, so it’s probably fine).
Given the busy nature of my work schedule, I’m likely to make it to other GPs only if they intersect with that schedule – so clearly it’s time to start figuring out which conferences I’m attending in 2011, to see which ones (if any) align with GP dates.
Which PTs will you plan to attend in 2011?

Courtesy of a heads up from Top 8 Magic, here is game one of the finals from GP Kobe 2009:

I thought their method of resolving Desire was interesting and unexpected. Thanks to Brian for the heads up, and Naoaki Umesaki for taking the video and putting it together nicely (notice the helpful tracking of life totals, cards played, mana pools, and storm counts). Apparently the remaining games from the final match will be posted as well. I’m looking forward to it.

The 2009 Grand Prix schedule has been posted. Click here to read it.
The Extended GP in Los Angeles in January is about the only one I might realistically make it to, unless work travel somehow puts me near one of the others.
Wizards has also updated the rules for making it to day two in a GP. Previously, GPs cut to the top 64 players, or, for GPs of 800 players or more, the top 128. The new rule will be either a cut to 64/128, or a cut to all players at X-2-0 or better, thus avoiding the heartbreaking “Yeah, you managed an X-2 record, but you’re being cut on some marginal tiebreak” situation that popped up a lot this year in the massive European GPs. That seems like a good change.